Much has been made of the improvement in the quality of the fans/cooler on the GTX 780 and Titan.

Can anyone comment on whether they're up to SPCR standards (for idling at least)?

Nothing by SPCR standards and i have not received mine yet, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

While the stock cooler seems decent and has good comments in most reviews, personally i have had bad experience with those round slot fans, over time they start developing a grinding sound.... so for me its not an option. So titans for me are out, unless you are into fitting an aftermarket cooler, like Prolimatch MK-26 or Artic Cooling Accelero III.

Speaking of custom, i had a very small window for ordering, and none of the custom coolers were coming, aside from EVGA ACX, so ended ordering GALAXY GTX780, since all had stock nvidia coolers, i had good experience with my Galaxy GTX580 in terms of noise and performance, it comes with a Acelero III from factory and backplate and fronplate from them, overall i never notice it, at idle its very low nosie (30% fan speed) and even gaming i never ever could hear anything over my ambient noise, so i decided to go that route again, bought the galaxy gtx780 + acelero III, will be installing it probably next weekend, im expecting similar results as my gtx580 since they are very similar in consumption...

With that said, now the custom coolers are starting to appear in retail. I had very high hopes with ASUS and their directCUII coolers, seeing how the past reviews on SPCR got editors choiceo on the GTX680/670 DCUII. Now on the GTX780 they did a totally new DCUII cooler, sadly the default settings seems more oriented for performance than noise, it seems one of the coolest running cards of all that i have read, but at the expense of noise, im guessing this can be tweaked with ASUS GPUTWEAK (similar as Rivatunner/ MSI Afterbuner / EVGA Precision but develop by asus from the ground up). in case you are interested check GURU3D ASUS GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II OC review, that has comments like the following,

Quote:

Cooling & Noise Levels

The NVIDIA reference coolers are great, but they follow the temperature target of 80 degrees C. With the DirectCU II, CoolTech Fan technology the GPU will get 425W of cooling power thrown at it. As a result the temperature target might remain 80 degrees C, but we have never seen the card pass 66 Degrees. An added benefit of that is that the dynamic clock frequency will go higher up to the point it reached its power target. So this is why the card is so close and sometimes a small notch faster then the GTX Titan. Noise wise I (and I am truly nitpicking here) I expected total silence. Fact remains that you can hear a bit of airflow when the GPU is under stress. Now it's close to nothing, but after reading all the marketing gobble on CoolTech Fan technology I expected the cooler perform bar nothing or at least get Parrot AR drone functionality. But it remains a cooling solution that can be compared to the competition in terms of performance. Overall though, the cooling solution is really good, no mistake there.

MSI has gotten very good reviews on their current N7XX series cards, specially on the GTX760 the MSI seems to be one of the quietest, with that said, and from the same people that reviewed the Asus GTX780 DCUII, the review of the MSI, GURU3D MSI GeForce GTX 780 Gaming review

Quote:

Cooling & Noise Levels

The NVIDIA reference coolers are doing their job well, but they follow the temperature target of 80 degrees C. With the TwinFrozr cooling technology the GPU will get 450W of cooling power thrown at it. As a result the temperature target might remain 80 degrees C, but we have never seen the card pass 60 Degrees. Now if the temperature is that low there is an extra benefit... the power and temp limiters do not kick in, allowing the product to boost a little higher then usual. So this is why the card is so close towards the GeForce GTX Titan. Noise wise I am very happy as well. In its default configuration you can not hear airflow when the GPU is under stress installed in a PC. It really is that silent, very impressive.

The only other option i would consider beside the MSI is Giagabyte with their Windforce, but havent read much either. One thing that still tickles me, i wanted to test the Prolimatech MK-26 cooler, it has gotten so low temps on GTX680, that seem very well to test here, but its very expensive, around $70 without fans, the Vortex 14 slim from polimatech seems like the ideal fans for this cooler, PWM and can be dropped to 500rpm (according prolimatch web), that could end up the quietest and coolest running GTX780/Titan, but its a huge cooler with very high weight.... at the end i decided against as my TJ08-E might not fit that cooler and i would have to hard mod my HR02 (the mounting bracket screws stick out), so ended up with Acelero III, but if i was to build on ATX with let say an Fractal Design Define R4 (can fit 170mm cooler), and with a mobo that had the PCIe slot on the 2nd position (like Asus Maximus IV Hero or MSI Z87-G45 gaming), i would have given a a shot to prolimatch MK26.

I just picked up the Asus gtx 780 direct cu card, and it seems pretty decent so far. My application is a little specialized, I'm using it for folding@home, and I don't think it's being pushed to the max yet. But it is pretty quiet, and it does stay pretty cool. I'm currently running it in a machine with a gtx 770 (another Asus direct cu card) and the 780 is at around 63 C, while the 770 is at around 67 C. And that's after some mild overclocking, I'm really going to have to try to crank those up more. I'm interested in getting a Titan, but I'd really like to see one with a custom cooler on it instead of the standard one.

I just picked up the Asus gtx 780 direct cu card, and it seems pretty decent so far. My application is a little specialized, I'm using it for folding@home, and I don't think it's being pushed to the max yet. But it is pretty quiet, and it does stay pretty cool. I'm currently running it in a machine with a gtx 770 (another Asus direct cu card) and the 780 is at around 63 C, while the 770 is at around 67 C. And that's after some mild overclocking, I'm really going to have to try to crank those up more. I'm interested in getting a Titan, but I'd really like to see one with a custom cooler on it instead of the standard one.

I'm a bit perplexed - do you get all this computing power only for folding@home? Do you work at Stanford, because to me that never made any sense. A local supercomputer/cluster is sooo much more energy efficient than a bunch of people around the globe steaming their graphics cards.

Besides, David Jones' group has recently showed that you can fold simple proteins with custom designed processors. So I think the effort is going the wrong direction.

Thanks for the replies, gents. I've also heard quite a few other positive comments about the cooler on the MSI Gaming lineup, which also comes on other 700-series cards.

I used to have a DCII 670, which was wonderfully quiet, but I sold that and added a Sapphire 7950 because I was into mining bitcoins for a while. Once mining was no longer profitable, I couldn't tolerate the noise that the Sapphire cooler makes at idle, so I sold it. Currently on integrated graphics--trying to decide what my next graphics card move will be.

I can't really afford anything at the moment anyway, but I'm keeping my ear to the ground for reports on the sound quality of what's available. I was surprised that there wasn't much in here about the current crop of high-end options. I'll probably just end up waiting until the 9000 series comes out to buy something. Hopefully all the talk of nvidia's improved coolers will inspire AMD to up their game too.

The only other option i would consider beside the MSI is Giagabyte with their Windforce, but havent read much either. One thing that still tickles me, i wanted to test the Prolimatech MK-26 cooler, it has gotten so low temps on GTX680, that seem very well to test here, but its very expensive, around $70 without fans, the Vortex 14 slim from polimatech seems like the ideal fans for this cooler, PWM and can be dropped to 500rpm (according prolimatch web), that could end up the quietest and coolest running GTX780/Titan, but its a huge cooler with very high weight.... at the end i decided against as my TJ08-E might not fit that cooler and i would have to hard mod my HR02 (the mounting bracket screws stick out), so ended up with Acelero III, but if i was to build on ATX with let say an Fractal Design Define R4 (can fit 170mm cooler), and with a mobo that had the PCIe slot on the 2nd position (like Asus Maximus IV Hero or MSI Z87-G45 gaming), i would have given a a shot to prolimatch MK26.

Owning a Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce 3x, I wasn't please with it (even though it performs very well as a custom) and bought an MK-26. I can tell you the MK-26 is worth every bit of money. I have two Noctua NF-S12A's strapped it and it's completely inaudible at idle on my test bench. Normally idles at the low 30C's and gets to 56C on Heaven bench. There is no doubt MK-26 is the way to go for uncompromised quietness and cooling.

Owning a Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce 3x, I wasn't please with it (even though it performs very well as a custom) and bought an MK-26. I can tell you the MK-26 is worth every bit of money. I have two Noctua NF-S12A's strapped it and it's completely inaudible at idle on my test bench. Normally idles at the low 30C's and gets to 56C on Heaven bench. There is no doubt MK-26 is the way to go for uncompromised quietness and cooling.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with MK-26. I read a lot about it a couple of months ago, when i was deciding if i would go into a $1k titan, even SPCR has reviewed it, and just by its pure size, it it has such a huge cooling area that it should perform well, and in most reviews the drops in temps are dramatically, in some cases like 20C or more on load. But three things did steer me away from it

1) My TJ08-E + HR02 + Micro atx board has the 1st pcie slot very close to the cpu socket (no extra pcie 1x like in some atx mobos), the HR02 just fits almost touching the GPUs back, with the weight of high end gpus in my case the GTX580 will touch, but this is not a big deal, the TJ08-E has a HDD cage that also works as support for gpus, so the MK26 should not have any issues touching, but the style of the mounting bracket has the screws sticking out of the back a lot, more than i have clearance between HR02 and my current GTX580, so i would have to mod the HR02 like dremel it some so the screws don't touch, something that i though for some time.... and almost decided to do it, but the second issues also, i decided to much work.

2) The second is its height, the TJ08-E is very wide, can fit tall coolers, has no problem clearing HR02 (160mm), but according to Prolimatech webpage, the MK-26 needs 170mm of clearance, idk if TJ08-E can clear that, and its not so clear, like the height of the MK-26 depends on the position of the GPU itself (like the chip) as the its not install to the floor or the mobo but to side mounted pcb. There is chance that it can, but $70 + shipping + custom taxes + broker fees, again having such a great time with acelero III, got me into not buying the mk26.

3) Lastly and not that important, the width of cooler, seems by pictures it takes at least 3 slots without fans, using 25mm fans seems it passes 4 slots, this is not an option for TJ08-E, as in micro ATX i only have 4 PCIe slots. This is not a big deal though, Prolimatch has Vortex 140 slim fans, btw very nice for them being slim fans, they have range of 500-1000rpm, but more important they are 15mm, in most picture that i seen with them seems like 4 slot cooling solution with the fans installed, so this is why its not a big deal, but i would be bound to Prolimatech Fans.

Even with those reasons steering me away from it, i do want to try it, its like something inside me is burning for trying the best cooler for gpus, i feel this is the last GPU im going to be able to use it, as im planning to move into 4k as soon as i can afford a monitor, but to move this i would have to go SLI at least for couple generations of gpus, so a cooler like the mk26 will never be an option again. I really wanted to try it, so i decided to go ATX on my Haswell build, i bought a new Fractal Design Define R4, it was $80 so i couldn't pass the sale, i bought it in advance preparing for mk26, but to my bad luck the case was damage in shipping, it has big dent on the back that bend the door slightly but also the chassis some, and the inside door of the frontal fans also has one of the clipping mechanism not hatching =(.... return it its more expensive than buying another, and the R4 prices went back up. So i decided again to go with what i had as i already spent another $80 for nothing. But still i would like to try it, will see maybe on the future.

Interesting, thanks for sharing the link, personally i was dissapointed with the comments on reviews into not bieng as quiet, having the previous GTX680/670 being reviewed by SPCR and gotten editor choice, this was the card that i was waiting for, and out of the reviews went with Stock + Arctic Cooling Accelero III (still have to install it, just finished building the haswell refresh, still with stock heatsink).

lb_felipe wrote:

Is now that card much noisier than MSI GTX 780 Gaming?

There is no way of knowing without both or someone that has reviewed both, maybe Guru3d can do a refresh to see how it measures now against MSI.

lb_felipe wrote:

How is it compared to MK-26 GTX 780 cooled (your guess)?

Honestly, while design matters, there is no escape into having bigger surface area to be much more effective as cooler, and this is where the MK26 excels, its massive... but really huge, it doesnt even fit in my TJ08-E, the cooling it has been reported in mulitple reviews (SPCR, HardwareSecrets, etc) have been really impressive, by far the best cooler in the market, i have no doubts thinking that it will still outperform any of the current none reference coolers, i mean, its a 3 slot cooler without fans, with fans its 4 to 5.... its just so big. Is it worth the trouble... idk, i mean you gotta plan for a case that can hold it like Fractal Design Define R4 / Arc Midi 2 that has 170/180mm of heatsink clearance, and have some way to support it, these are the things that turn me off at the end, its also very expensive, $82 for the black version without fans and clips for the vortex 14. Now if i were to go with it, i would also get the Prolimatech Ultra Sleek Vortex 140mm x 15mm Slim Profile PWM Fan and Prolimatech Ultra Sleek Vortex 14 Fan Wire Clip Set - MK-26 Series, the fans are PWM and can range from 500-1000rpm, my guess is that 500rpm they will be virtually inaudible and still shouldn't reach the 80C of the boost 2.0 threshold, so it should be very nice cooler to play around.

But having such good comments about the MSI, and now that Asus has the new bios.... weather its worth the extra money, time and risk its only up to you, i personally slip away from it out of not having a case that could fit it, although i do have R4 just came damage from shipping and new one is coming, but this is more for future build when i move to a 4k monitor for sli setup, but for now ill just stay with my accelero III extreme that was very very good on GTX580.

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